What's War Under Any Other Name Good For? Absolutely Nothing!
Don't call it a 'military operation.'
Donald Trump is reportedly considering sending military troops to Iran, because for him, all the world’s a video game and its people merely NPCs. Trump is an unhinged madman and that’s proven an obstacle in making any lasting deal with Iran, so he’s now threatened to “unleash hell” on the nation from the comfort of Mar-a-Lago.
War is hell, they say. Although I agree with my childhood hero Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda), who observes in a 1977 episode of M*A*S*H, “War isn’t hell. War is war, and hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.” When Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) questions that premise, Hawkeye asks him, “Who goes to hell?” Mulcahy answers, “Sinners, I believe.”
“Exactly,” Hawkeye says. “There are no innocent bystanders in hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.” (Watch below.)
Troops on the ground would prove a catastrophic escalation in an already catastrophic war that Trump started for no good reason. However, Trump and his GOP stooges are insisting that this is not a war but some other word for thousands of Americans losing their lives in a ritual sacrifice to Trump’s monstrous ego.
“People don’t like me using the word ‘war,’ so I won’t,” Trump said at an event last week. He later added, “They call it a war. I call it a military operation.” He’s also claimed that only “Democrats call it a war. We call it a military operation.”
Yes, the mad MAGA king has fully embraced PC euphemistic nonsense speak. Perhaps this “military operation” won’t have “casualties,” either, just “Purple Heart winners.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier if he’d call the Iran war a “war or a conflict.” (Apparently, “dessert topping” wasn’t an option.) Johnson said it’s a “conflict.” Johnson lies more easily than he avoids porn, but this isn’t even a smart lie. The majority of voters who oppose the obvious war in Iran won’t suddenly change their minds because it’s called a “military operation,” “a conflict,” or a “furniture polish.”
President Harry Truman, who actually served in a war, initially described the Korean War as a “police action” because the U.S. never formally declared war. The “armed conflict” between North Korea and South Korea was an obvious proxy war between communist China/the Soviet Union and the United States. Congress officially declares war, and it was argued that keeping the war as a “police action” maintained the Cold War status between the Soviet Union and the U.S. Well, either “war” or “police action,” “potato” or “potAHto,” millions of innocent bystanders still died. (I don’t distinguish between Americans, Koreans, or the Chinese here.)
Trump isn’t watching his language to avoid a much larger and bloodier war, one the might end in nuclear armageddon. He’s bypassing a formal congressional declaration of war because he’s a wannabe tyrant who resents any perceived constraints on his power.
“We have a thing called a war, or as they would rather say, a military operation,” Trump said out loud in public. “It’s for legal reasons. Because as a military operation, I don’t need any approvals. As a war you’re supposed to get approval from Congress. Something like that. So I call it a military operation.”
Johnson, who supposedly leads the House, is going along with all this for the same reason Igor dug up dead bodies for Dr. Frankenstein. He’s not paid to ask questions or have a conscience.
However, if Trump thinks avoiding the “w” word will help him politically, he’s clearly due for another camel-spotting cognitive test. Vietnam was another “police action” that bled like a war. There were 16,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Under President Lyndon B. Johnson, that number grew to 184,000 by the end of 1965 and peaked at 537,000 in 1968 when LBJ decided not to run for re-election.
Unlike Trump, LBJ tried articulating a rationale for the war. In April 1965, he gave a speech at a university — hostile territory for him at the time. “Why must we take this painful road?” he said. “Why must this nation hazard its ease, and its interest, and its power for the sake of a people so far away? We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure …” Meanwhile, Trump just watches his Call of Duty-style video briefings on the war and boasts that he doesn’t really “care” if he makes a deal with Iran that prevents needless deaths.
LBJ was a far nobler man than Trump, though, and he died regretting his disastrous decision to escalate in Vietnam. Trump is incapable of any complex human emotion, certainly not contrition. A White House official reportedly said, “[Trump] is getting a little bored with Iran. Not that he regrets it or something — he’s just bored and wants to move on.”
This war isn’t like one of Trump’s former wives. He can’t “move on” just because he’s bored. He must live with the consequences of his actions, but unfortunately, so does the entire world. Thousands of very real people, including children, have died in this war already. That number will only increase with a psychopath as commander in chief.
M*A*S*H was set during the Korean War but started airing during the last few years of the Vietnam War. The pointed anti-war commentary — not to mention the hairstyles — made it a very modern series, one that didn’t depict a romanticized past but instead confronted an unpleasant current reality.
In the 1976 episode “The Interview,” Klinger (Jamie Farr) tells a news correspondent (Clete Roberts), “I think it’s the most stupidest thing in the world. You call it a police action back home, right? Over here, it’s a war. A ‘police action’ sounds like we’re over here arresting people, handing out parking tickets. War is just killing. That’s all.” (Watch below.)
“I’ve seen so many people to whom killing is a casual thing,” Hawkeye observes. “I don’t know how we manufacture people like that, but it seems to me like we’ll never run out of them.”
Trump will send young men and women to Iran, where many will die or return permanently wounded or psychologically scarred. No matter what Trump or Republicans call this war, people will suffer because Trump is bored and doesn’t care. War isn’t about glory or false bravery. It’s just killing. That’s all.